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Dark Personality Traits of People Who Invest in Crypto Revealed: ScienceAlert
Since Bitcoin launch Open-source software helped popularize the concept 15 years ago, and people from all walks of life have entered the cryptocurrency market.
However, some personalities are more attracted to the decentralized and anonymous economic system than others.
A survey of just over 2,000 American adults conducted in the United States in 2022 confirmed a trend of owners of one of the many thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence to possess a ‘dark’ personality.
Additionally, researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Miami behind the recent analysis of the data also found an association with beliefs in conspiracy theories and greater use of fringe social media platforms.
Although the concept of a privacy-preserving digital economy system dates back to the 1980sIt was the launch of Bitcoin in 2009 that attracted serious investment from a more mainstream population.
The capital of the global cryptocurrency market is worth just under $2.5 trillionmost of it in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether.
For those who invest, the encrypted accounting technology behind the coin offers a means of privacy and security that other forms of coinage cannot, placing economic control directly in the hands of the distributors of wealth, eliminating the need for Financial Institution and state supervision.
In reality, cryptocurrency remains a fringe form of currency kept afloat by a passionate minority, having more in common with gambling chips than with a pocket full of cash.
Driven by distrust in traditional authorities, it can be assumed that cryptocurrency investors place more importance on conspiracies, alternative political leanings and less trust in science.
However, existing research struggles to confine investors to any particular ideologies, finding that digital currency owners can be variously described as anarchists, libertarians and populists. Other studies note a worrying relationship between far-right beliefs It is white supremacy.
To determine what defines the types of individuals willing to buy into the cryptocurrency dream, cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell of the University of Toronto and his colleagues Casey Klofstad and Joseph Uscinski of the University of Miami surveyed 2,001 Americans about their cryptocurrency ownership and political, psychological and social characteristics.
Only 30% of respondents said they owned cryptocurrency, a group that was surprisingly diverse in its politics, representing a range of political ideologies that span the extremes of the left and right.
However, there was also a tendency for investors to fall outside the traditional spectrum, adhering to orientations of Christian nationalism and American exceptionalism. They were also typically represented by dark personality traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism, scoring slightly higher than non-crypto investors on scales that reflected a need for chaos, supporting similar findings from previous research.
By far the biggest predictors of being a cryptocurrency owner now or in the past are being male, relying heavily on fringe forms of social media for news, being argumentative, and having an aversion to authoritarian forms of government.
With such a small sample of self-reported results, it’s difficult to say with confidence how representative the findings are of the broader community, especially outside of the U.S. It’s also important to reiterate that cryptocurrency buyers are not all cut from the same cloth, with extremely diverse motivations and interests guiding their investment decisions.
However, the authors argue that their findings contribute valuable details that help us better understand the demographics of cryptocurrencies in a world where trust in traditional authority structures and media sources is increasingly fragmented.
“As governments seek to more tightly regulate, or in some cases imitate, cryptocurrencies, it will be necessary to understand the appeal of these currencies,” the team writes.
This research was published in PLOS ONE.